So my reaction to this reality is to be stubborn ol’ SOB and face it, which makes me what? A survivor? A decent person? Someone who loves getting the crap beaten out of him? All of the above, or some mix-n-match thereby?

And is radio silence the best option? Even before having someone better known than you fall to the forces you deal with a lot-

So even before the whole death of Robin Williams made many of us ask each other if we’re really all right, some of us doing a better job of looking at ourselves than others, there was plenty to make us keep our tongues. Right before this unpleasantness, there was the raging battle between two desperate forces wishing the other side would just submit and do what they wanted, and f’em if they wanted a say in their fate.

But ANYways: As someone who published with Kindle Direct, I was asked directly by Amazon to send off a nasty email to Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch, probably to offset the emails Authors United asked the fans of the 900 scribes who signed on were asking their fans to send to Jeff Bezos.

Metrics war, anyone? Another contest to be decided by measuring in inches…?

And get your minds out of the gutters; I was thinking football at that moment…

So how am I supposed to react to Amazon asking me to do something kinda creepy (and misreading George Orwell in the process) against a brick-and-mortar publisher that have damned little sympathy for in the first place?

Picture this: You’re a kid, between the age of seven and ten, who comes home one day after school. Mom and Dad are showing signs of a nasty, horrible fight, scars on their faces, every f’n’ possession in the house broken/scarred in some way. They come before you in unison, saying that the house is going to be abandoned that night, that everything I knew was now no longer possible, and I have to choose which parent I’m going to leave this place with forever, abandoning my home while casting my fate with only one parent.

And when I ask them what’s waiting for me in the future, they reply in unison, “You have to trust us.”

Yeah, that’s comforting…

Which brings me back to what prompted this mea lameo culpa as to why I haven’t written anything for you to ignore: IRL. The acronym that damns me as I question it: Must this reality be what defines me? Did I somehow get the blue pill by mistake?

If the R in the acronym, “real,” is the main issue, maybe it’s a matter of finding a new reality for those hateful three letters:

IRL = It’s Really Lousy

Which is too damn close to the original sensation, so…

IRL = I’m Rather Lazy

Which might be a good summation as to why we have radio silence, except it doesn’t feel like I’ve done nothing; it only looks like I haven’t, which brings us back to hidden weights and traumas noted above, so…

IRL = Ich Reche Leben

I revenge life; I stand for the living and will f’ you up badly if you stand against living. And I mean living at all levels, unlike some folk who think a fetus has rights over everyone until they are born, at which point the kid’s screwed on this side of the womb.

And if I go that route, I show that my German is still sheisse despite my best half-efforts…

IRL = In Reginae Labia

Which is Latin for queens with large lips; not as controversial as some topics, but maybe waaaay too personal, so…

IRL = Im Lag Righin

Which means in Gaelic, “stiff weak butter,” because f’ all else if that’s what we have to worry about now…

It also means that yes, the Gaelic studies have started, so that means for those I’ve shared some Deep Dark Matters with that that project is being a’born; and if you want to know what all that entails, I have to find some less humblebrag-prone version of Paetron to build a cult around to disseminate the details through…

(And trust me, there are a few Paetron support efforts out there that come damn close to resembling cults for the Lovecraftian gods, which of course means another damn hotlink…)